The name "goth" originally came from a Germanic
tribe (ie the Goths). The Romans regarded them as barbaric and
uncultured, much like the Vandals. "Gothic" was later
applied to a style of medieval architecture by critics who
regarded it as similarly barbaric and uncultured (something
similar happened with the term "Vandal"). The term was
later applied to a late 18th/early 19th century style of
literature which had a fascination with death and the
supernatural.

Exactly how "goth" became applied to the
post-punk musical movement is unclear. The earliest use within
the post-punk scene is likely to have been either by Martin
Hannett, Joy Division's producer, or by Siouxsie and the Banshees
in the summer of 1979 (see below). By late 1979 and early 1980,
the term "gothic" seems to have been fairly common in
music journalism to describe bands such as Joy Division and the
Banshees. In 1981 Abbo from UK Decay used the term
"gothic" to describe the emerging band movement. Then
later, probably about 1982, Ian Astbury used the term
"goths" to describe Sex Gang Children's fans. On the
surface, there seems to be a clear progression here, with the
term gothic/goth being used to describe first individual bands,
then a movement of bands, then the followers of that movement.

However, it's not that simple. The term "goth"
doesn't seem to have been commonly applied to the movement until
some time in 1983, several years after it had originally been
used. In early 1983, the most common term for what became the
goth movement was "Positive Punk", or later
"Posi-Punk", courtesy of Richard North in the NME
(February 1983).

Somehow, presumably sometime in 1983, the term seems to
have been replaced by "goth".

The first usage of the term "Goths" to describe
the members of the subculture which I've been able to uncover is
in an article by Tom Vague in the October 1983 re-launch issue of
Zig Zag (under Mick Mercer's editorship).

Describing the audience for Death Cult's Berlin show, he
says "...and a pretty motley crew they are too. Hordes of
Goths. It could be London..."

What seems to have happened is that the term
"gothic" had been floating around, was occasionally
used to describe bands, and eventually stuck. Alongside this, the
fans of these bands were described as goths, probably as a result
of comments about Sex Gang Children and their fans.

No individual person was solely responsible, but details of
early significant usages are given below:

The Doors

The Doors were described as "gothic rock" in
1967. Interesting, given that a fair few early goth and
goth-related bands (such as Joy Division) were influenced by
them. Thanks to Nevermort for bringing my attention to this article

Bowie

In 1974, Bowie described Diamond Dogs
as being "gothic". Other bands may well have used the
term as well, and had it used about them, but given Bowie's
undeniable influence on the embryonic goth scene, it's worth
noting here. It's remotely possible that Bowie's use of the term
may have influenced Hannett and/or Siouxsie.

Joy Division

The first dateable use of the term "gothic" in
relation to post-punk music was by Tony Wilson, who described Joy
Division as gothic compared with the pop mainstream on a BBC TV
programme, "Something Else" (15/9/79), when Tony Wilson
and Steve Morris were interviewed. This is unlikely to be the
earliest use of it, though.

In a Factory Records interview by Mary Hannon (source
unknown, date post-UP, pre-Closer), there is the following
passage:

"One clue to JD lies in their album's title. Another is
the description given by Martin Hannett, who calls them 'dancing
music, with gothic overtones'. Unintentionally, Bernard Albrecht
gave an excellent description of 'gothic' in our interview, when
describing his favourite film 'Nosferatu'. 'The atmosphere is
really evil, but you feel comfortable inside it'."

"Curtis may project like an ambidextrous barman purging
his physical hang-ups, but the 'gothic dance music' he
orchestrates..."

[Review by Chris Bohn, University of London Union, gig
8/2/80]

"Joy Division are masters of this gothic gloom..."

As can be seen from the above, after the interview by Mary
Hannon "Gothic" seems to have become a quite common
term describing Joy Division and certain other groups, including
the Banshees. The Banshees independently used the term around the
same time to describe their new direction, but I don't know
whether that would pre or post date the Mary Hannon interview
(see below).

In any event, I'd hazard a guess that Hannett's
"gothic overtones" comment pre-dates Wilson's supposed
comment, as there are only two and a half weeks between Wilson's
comment and Penny Kiley's description of the term gothic as
"overworked" (although two weeks can be a long time in
journalism). Since Unknown Pleasures came out in May/June 79, I'd
guess Hannett's comment can be loosely dated to summer 1979.

Siouxsie and the Banshees

At around the same time, Siouxsie used "gothic"
to describe the Banshees' new musical direction. This was in
reference to "Join Hands", which came out at the end of
August 1979. Since I don't have a definite date for either
comment, it's hard to say whether the Banshees or Hannett were
first.

The following quotes are taken from "Siouxsie And The
Banshees: The Authorised Biography", by Mark Paytress, and
mainly relate to Juju, which came out in
1981.

Steve Severin: "We'd actually described Join Hands
as "gothic" at the time of its release, but journalists
hadn't picked up on it. Certainly, at that time we were reading a
lot of Edgar Allan Poe and writers like that. A song like
"Premature Burial" from that album is certainly gothic
in its proper sense.

Phil Oakey: It wasn't the bands fault but I do think they
invented goth as we know it. They were archetypally what it
became - especially those intense vocals and Kenny's terrific
tribal drumming. It established the pattern.

Sioux: I've always thought that one of our greatest strengths
was our ability to craft tension in music and subject matter. Juju
had a strong identity, which the goth bands that came in our
wake tried to mimic, but they simply ended up diluting it. They
were using horror as the basis for stupid rock n roll pantomime.
There was no sense of tension in their music. Anyway, Juju
wasn't all about darkness.

There is also this interesting quote from a live review by
Nick Kent in the NME, 29/7/78:

Parallels and comparisons can now be drawn with gothic rock
architects like The Doors and, certainly, early Velvet
Underground.

UK Decay

In an interview with Steve Keaton from Sounds
in February 1981, Abbo from UK Decay inadvertently named the goth
movement: "he said 'it's gonna be a movement' and we're
going nah, we'll be gone in six months. He said you've got to get
a name for it, it's not dance or alternative or New Pop or mod...
and I remember saying 'we're into the whole Gothic thing'... and
we sat there laughing about how we should have gargoyle shaped
records and only play churches. Course he put it all in the
interview.. for six months everything went quiet then when the
album came out everyone was asking 'what's this Gothic thing
you're into?' And it's a total joke!"

Importantly, Keaton titled the article "Punk Gothique", presciently commenting "Could this be the coming of Punk Gothique? With Bauhaus flying on similar wings could it be the next big thing?".

Two months later, in an interview with the US magazine
"Flipside", Abbo used "gothic" to
describe their style:

Flipside: Is your music political?

Abbo: Uh, well yeah some of it, the early stuff is real
political, "For My Country" was sort of an
anti-nationalist thing, pacifist. Our lyrics are now sort of
based on sex and death, mystical, gothic is how we describe it in
England, the new single is about violation of privacy, unexpected
guest in the house, surreal...

Ian Astbury/Andi Sex Gang/The NME

In an interview with Dave Thompson and Jo-Anne Green of Alternative
Press magazine in November 1994, Ian Astbury, the
vocalist in Southern Death Cult, laid claim to having invented
the goth tag:

"The goth tag was a bit of a joke," insists Ian
Astbury. "One of the groups coming up at the same time as us
was Sex Gang Children, and Andi -- he used to dress like a
Banshees fan, and I used to call him the Gothic Goblin because he
was a little guy, and he's dark. He used to like Edith Piaf and
this macabre music, and he lived in a building in Brixton called
Visigoth Towers. So he was the little Gothic Goblin, and his
followers were Goths. That's where goth came from."

And again in an article entitled "The Gloom
Generation,"by Suzan Colon which appeared in the July
1997 edition of Details Magazine:

" For a lot of people who had been in it a few years
before, punk no longer resembled what they had originally
intended it to be. Goth gave them a chance to establish another
platform that was specifically theirs. This new scene attracted
the dispossessed, a lot of punks living on welfare, shoplifting.
Many of them lived in Brixton in the early '80s because it was
cheap. There was one band called Sex Gang Children who dressed in
a very similar fashion to Bauhaus and Specimen. A load of us used
to hang out with their singer, Andi SexGang. He lived on the top
floor of an old Victorian house. We'd go up there for tea, and
he'd be in a Chinese robe with black eye makeup on and his hair
all done up, playing Edith Piaf albums with fifteen TVs turned
on. We had this vision of him as Count Visigoth in his tower,
holding court. At the time, Dave Dorrell heard us calling Andi
"Count Visigoth" and his followers "goths,"
so that's what he called everyone in the scene."

This would be around late 82/early 83 (when both bands were
"coming up") and thus post-dates both Hannett's and
Abbo's use of the term "gothic", but is probably the
first use of the term "goths" to describe devotees of a
certain type of musical style.

Importantly, David Dorrell used to write for the NME...

Here's a further quote from the same article:

"PETE MURPHY: I know that Bauhaus presumably started what
the critics coined the "gothic" genre in 1979 with
"Bela Lugosi's Dead," but goth was a myth dreamt up by
journalists sometime back in the '80s to describe Bauhaus, Joy
Division, Iggy's vocal vibe on The Idiot, and so on. The music
was often unaccomplished, but made up for it with a kind of
transcendent quality.

DANIEL ASH: When we recorded "Bela Lugosi's Dead,"
Bauhaus had only been together for four weeks. We never called
ourselves or our music: "goth." That was something that
came a few years later from the press.

DAVID DORRELL: Oh, God, it all comes back! I won't even try
and make claims that I wrote an article and called them goths or
whether I cribbed that off one of my fellow goth journalists --
speed burns my memory. As a journalist, I noticed that the end of
punk was starting to get darker. (John) Lydon was getting dark
with Public Image Ltd. By committing suicide, Ian Curtis of Joy
Division not only put an end to his own life and that of his
band, but allowed a vacuum to occur into which all of these other
bands scurried."

Depite Dorrell's memory lapse, it seems likely that Astbury
was right and Dorrell picked up the tag from the description of
Andi Sex Gang & co. Further confirmatiom of this is from an
interview with Andi Sex Gang in an article by Gavin Baddeley:

Gothic lore identifies the Sex Gang Children vocalist Andi
SexGang as the first Goth, nicknamed "Count Visigoth"
because of his flamboyantly dark dress sense, the band's
early-80s fans being styled "Goths" by association.
"It was all unbeknownst to me - they called my place
Visigoth Towers behind my back as it were" laughed Andi.
"A couple of musicians I knew who lived round the corner -
Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy [both in early Goth faves Southern
Death Cult] coined the nickname I think, who mentioned it to a
music journo called Dave Dorrell who then started bandying the
"Goth" tag around. But "Gothic" had already
been around for a while to describe various styles of music,
especially Joy Division. For me personally the term Gothic refers
to something a little more cultivated and classical than the
commercial Goth you see about."

Chronology

1974 : "Diamond Dogs" by Bowie is described as
"gothic"

29/7/78: Nick Kent in the NME says, of Siouxsie: Parallels
and comparisons can now be drawn with gothic rock architects like
The Doors and, certainly, early Velvet Underground.

2/10/79: Penny Kiley says in a review "'Gothic'
has become a somewhat overworked definition of the genre, but the
effect of Joy Division is the same as (to take an obvious
example) that of the Banshees."

2/81: Steve Keaton from Sounds interviews UK Decay and titles the article "Punk Gothique",
saying:"Could this be the coming of Punk Gothique? With Bauhaus flying on similar wings could it be the next big thing?".

1982/early 83: Ian Astbury uses the term "goths"
to describe Sex Gang Children's fans, which is then picked up by
NME writer David Dorrell.